How to format your references using the Basic and Applied Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Basic and Applied Ecology. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Jones, D. T. (2003). Structural biology. Learning to speak the language of proteins. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5649), 1347–1348.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang, L., & Anderson, D. J. (2010). Identification of an aggression-promoting pheromone and its receptor neurons in Drosophila. Nature, 463(7278), 227–231.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pan, X., Shao, M., & Kulkarni, S. R. (2004). A distance of 133-137 parsecs to the Pleiades star cluster. Nature, 427(6972), 326–328.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hill, C. A., Fox, A. N., Pitts, R. J., Kent, L. B., Tan, P. L., Chrystal, M. A., Cravchik, A., Collins, F. H., Robertson, H. M., & Zwiebel, L. J. (2002). G protein-coupled receptors in Anopheles gambiae. Science (New York, N.Y.), 298(5591), 176–178.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Anderson, J. B., & Johannesson, R. (2005). Understanding Information Transmission. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Dana, L.-P., & Ramadani, V. (Eds.). (2015). Family Businesses in Transition Economies: Management, Succession and Internationalization. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Moule, J. (2012). Working to Awaken. In P. A. Whang (Ed.), Rattling Chains: Exploring Social Justice in Education (pp. 27–36). SensePublishers.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Basic and Applied Ecology.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2017, February 10). Young Girl Asks Top Republican “Do You Believe In Science? Because I Do!” IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/young-girl-asks-top-republican-do-you-believe-in-science-because-i-do/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. (1973). Narcotic Addiction Treatment and Rehabilitation Programs in New York City (B-166217). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Nixon, H. A. (2015). Defining Principals: The Seen and the Unseen. A Critical Discourse Analysis of Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards Five and Six [Doctoral dissertation]. George Washington University.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Hodara, S. (2013, September 15). Sculptures Big and Small, and All in the Open. New York Times, WE10.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Jones, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Jones, 2003; Wang & Anderson, 2010).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Wang & Anderson, 2010)
Three authors: (Pan et al., 2004)
6 or more authors: (Hill et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Basic and Applied Ecology
Abbreviation	Basic Appl. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1439-1791
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics